Main menu

Episode 10: Coffee. Black.

Special guest Kayla LaFrance, space scientist and winner of TBS’ King of the Nerds, joins Sue, Grace and Jarrah as we share our unabashed love for Captain Kathryn Janeway. In this episode we talk about Janeway’s importance as a role model for girls, discuss common critiques leveled against her, and share our favorite Janeway moments.

But this time, I actually want to bring up a complaint. I won’t try to tell anybody how to do their podcast, again, you are doing such a great work and I don’t want anybody to think I’m trying to change anything about that. I just want to give you a little bit of feedback about what I like and what I dislike.

Usually I really love how you deal with critisism, problematic characters and so on. You have a way of discussing even problematic things like Harry Mudd that is productive and that is actually worth listening to, because I can learn things, I can agree or disagree with your points, I can think about that. I love that.

Now, in this episode, you started out with reading out the most common lines from forums and stuff that were negative feedback to janeway. You are doing that for several minutes and of course, as I’d suspect: most of the stuff people brought up in those forums is straight up bullshit. And you keep reading it out, laughing about it, calling on how absolutly inadequate and stupid that is.
I totally agree with you. It is stupid. It is sexist. It is crap that should be proven wrong. But at this moment, you are not discussing it seriously, you are not dealing with it in any manner that is leading to any solution, you just seem to read it out, present it to the public to show how utterly stupid that is.

I can get why you do that and it is important that you point things like that out. I just can’t help but feeling “okay, I’m sitting here, 15 minutes into the podcast and the only substantial thing said about janeway was how stupid the bad feedback was. And I ask myself: Is this really the best thing to say about her on a podcast with limited time?
It just feels like you are adressing nobody there. those people, who write this shit on forums, won’t listen to your podcast most likely. And between you and your audience that consists of people that are obviously interested in women in star trek, the good and bad sides of it…wouldn’t it be enough to just say: Okay everybody, we all know about the bullshit said about janeway, we know it is the same shit we hear about every female character on tv ever and we all agree on how stupid it is. And now we move on to the rest of the podcast.

You start correcting those negative feedback comments, you say things like “people are inconsistant.”
that is correct. That is also the correct answer to the comment you are talking about. But the person who watches this podcast is not the one who wrote this comment, it is somebody who likes janesway and wants to know more about here. To “normal” people who don’t write this shit in forums, you are just talking about things that are self-evident. And that leaves the audience sitting there like “yeah I know that. I know and respect that, you don’t have to tell ME that, tell it those idiots that wrote that shit. I’m hear to learn about trek, not about the most basic facts of what a civilized society should look like.”

You keep on doing that, talking about negative stuff that we all know doesn’t make any sense and it just uses up so much time. Nearly a 1/3 of the whole episode is over before you even start talking about the positive things, your favorite moments and so on. It just seems like such a waste.

So, finished. I’d like to apologize in advance for that looooong comment that probably didn’t even manage to point out what I meant, I’m usually not the best at explaining myself in delicate situations.
I am not trying to say “hey, you guys should only talk about the positive things and pretend as if nothing bad would ever happen.” Negative feedback to characters like janeway is a real thing, it should be brought up to discuss and it should be adressed. I only wanted to say that for my personal preference, it wasn’t adressed in a very constructive and productive manner here. It took up much time, didn’t lead to any conclusion other than “yeah those people are stupid” and therefore, I don’t think it was really worth it using so much of your time to do that.
Now, it is done, I don’t expect anybody to change anything just because of my opinion, I just wanted to kind of write that down because it really bothered me and maybe it is a thought that you can understand or maybe other people can agree on.

Anyway, as said before: I really like your podcast, I also like this episode and I am excited to see more of it, as always!